Sunday, June 14, 2015

"Much of the practice is simply a remembering, a
reminding yourself to be fully awake"

Jon Kabat-Zinn

In a previous post I discussed mindfulness. I’m putting my
time where my mouth is and doing an 8-week course in mindfulness based stress
reduction (MBSR). Here’s the story up to half-time:

WEEK 1: At the first class we perform body scan.
With our eyes closed, we slowly bring our attention to different parts of the
body. If our minds wander off, we are encouraged to bring the focus back to
what’s going on with our body. No need to have a go at yourself for letting
your mind wander-just bring the focus back to the body scan. After the first
meeting we are encouraged to engage in body scan 5-6 times over the coming
week.

To have an experience that we can use as a practice of acting mindfully, we very slowly eat a sweet. (I pick up a piece of fudge that’s stuck to another piece of
fudge-yuusssss). The activity’s a chance to really focus on the sensation of
eating. Our instructor makes the analogy of how many young children act when
they eat an ice cream-poring over its texture and appearance as they enjoy it. Probably
not something we do every day if we’re in the habit of “grazing”. I know I
often nosh a sandwich at my desk while in the midst of swearing at the desktop
screen.

Back home, at my first attempt at doing a body scan by
myself I have a false start when a funny thought makes me laugh too much. The
next few attempts I avoid laughter, but it’s definitely difficult to avoid
daydreaming when doing the body scan. As suggested in the classes, I try
to picture a spotlight shining on the different parts of my body as I move from
the toes upwards.

WEEK 2: At the class we describe the steps and
sensations involved in making a cup of tea. With our eyes closed, we take turns
in describing a different step involved in the whole process. Must say that I’m
tempted to shout out something silly like “and then I make the tea and drink
the tea and then go for a walk with my granny”, but maintain my
composure. The avoiding judgment thing is probably even harder when other
people are involved in one’s mindfulness-I can’t help but think some people are
jumping too far ahead in the tea-making process to allow the rest of the group
enough material to work on. I'd like to bring more maturity to my mindfulness, but then again, I should withhold judging myself too harshly.

After a whopping 7-8 days, my initial enthusiasm for homework
practice wanes slightly. With a lot going on at work I'm not doing quite as
much mindfulness practice as I did before. So much for not judging myself as well!

WEEK 3: At the classes we are expressing
frustration about need being able to sustain attention to the present when we
do things like body scan, but the instructor reminds us that what is key is our
intention to become more mindful, and our the adaptation of a non-judgemental
approach to our own thoughts (including judgement about whether or not they are
"mindful enough").

We're starting into mindful yoga, a gentle form of yoga.
Essentially it involves gentle stretching of the limbs. Like the body scan, you
try to keep the attention on your body and its sensations.

Outside class, toothache strikes, bringing my attention
forcefully back to my present bodily sensations on a regular basis. With my the
rest of my body bringing the brain’s attention to it, as opposed to my brain
deciding to focus on the rest of my body, I’m reminded to do the mindful yoga
most days.

As I'm getting more into watching the recommended videos,
I'm learning aboutnon-striving, an attitude related to not trying to get
anything out of one's awareness of the current moment (perhaps tricky when most
people want to get something out of mindfulness).

WEEK 4: One thing I note one or two other people
at the class saying is that they want to have an “emptier” mind when doing
meditation. I don’t think that’s really what mindfulness is about. Your
attention still has content, it’s simply that you adopt a different attitude
towards it.

A 4-day weekend knocks my mindfulness schedule off
somewhat, although I work some body scan into moments between awakening and
getting out of bed. I also do more of the “informal practice”. Part of our
informal practice is to note unpleasant experiences. One particular moment was
an email I received that induced a mix of annoyance at myself and the person
sending it. My heart rate probably increased, although with hindsight I doubt I
noticed as much when it actually happened, wrapped up as I was in the possible implications
of what was being said to me. However, after the initial wave of negative
feeling I decided to focus on how I felt at that moment, and then what I could
do step-by-step to respond. Whether or not my thoughts were “mindful enough”, a
little bit of focus on the actual present killed of the perils of an imaginary
future.

Stay tuned next month for the second half of my Mindfulness Odyssey!

For an intro to the ideas behind mindfulness-based stress reduction, you could check out the following resource:

Tuesday, June 9, 2015

Early June. I am back where I first studied psychology, Trinity
College Dublin. Crossing the historical front square for the unapologetically
brutalist architecture of the Arts Block. It’s the International College of
Neuropsychopharmacology (CINP)’s thematic meeting, and the theme of the meeting
is stress, inflammation and depression.

The charm of a thematic meeting is that one knows that there’s
going to be a lot of work that’s of interest to you. I make no secret of the
fact that I’m not a big fan of enormous, “GloboConference” type meetings. I
can recall a least one occasion when I was presenting in a session where the
theme was clearly “a bunch of studies that have nothing to do with each other,
but couldn’t be matched up with anything else on this day”. Ah well, maybe I’m
just bitter because a 1,000-strong poster session can confront you with your
own insignificance as a little researcher star in the vast galaxies of Science.

When I heard my poster number was to be P001 I was nervous that
this meeting would have the opposite problem: a lack of other posters. However,
these nerves were unjustified. There’s an active session of over 100 posters,
with topics of interest to me such as depression, ketamine and probiotics being
covered.

With a keen focus to the meeting there is a
risk of repetition at the talks. However, although some introductions do cover some common ground,
this is a complex enough topic for there to be plenty to cover, and each
researcher brings something different to the party. NB: they also (generally) skip
through stuff that previous speakers have covered already in their earlier
intros-let that be a warning not to spend an entire conference prior to your
own talk locked in your hotel room practicing your PowerPoint! The speakers
often differ in their presentation style, but all are accomplished researchers
with plenty to show.

A highlight is getting a chance to meet and hear from Ron Duman,
an influential figure in the idea that neurotrophic factors in the brain might
be implicated in depression. At his talk he discusses new pathways linking
inflammation to depression that he is interested in. Like most researchers at the event he turns out to be a very
approachable person too, as we find out at the social evening in Temple Bar.
(The touristy trad band at the venue wind up some of the indigenous crew, but
what are you gonna do? Better that than the wave of Weatherspoon’s about to
descend upon our poor capital.)

Another talk of interest is by Phil Burnet of Oxford. He discusses
recent findings thatprebiotics
(fibres that help the growth of friendly bacteria) can lead to a reduction in
cortisol output, as well as changes in processing of emotional stimuli. These
findings chime nicely with some results that Timothy Dinan presents, indicating thatprobiotics can lead to a subtle reductions in stress.
Speaking of senior figures from our group, the mighty John Cryan also gives a
highly engaging talk covering broad ground, taking in stress as well as
hunger-related hormone ghrelin.

Future thematic meetings from CINP will be worth watching out for people interesting in neuropsychology and mental disorder, although be warned that the talks can have a heavy focus on molecular pathways and preclinical work. If you want the "globo" equivalent, than check out next year's World Congress.